Kaladi and Sankara

Lakshmi Srinivas lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM
Wed Nov 17 16:14:30 UTC 1999


--- Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan <Palaniappa at AOL.COM>
wrote:
> One can have the name like maturai mIn2AkSi even
> though there is no other
> famous mIn2AkSi (except may be Houston's :-))

Though not vaDapazaniappan even in Madras :-)
>
> But no place name was used in
> tirunAvukkaracu's case.
> With respect to the other saint cuntarar, we find in
> SII 2, no. 65, tEvAram
> singers named after ArUran2 along with those named
> after campantan2, and
> tirunAvukkaraiyan2.

Also are any of appUti aDikaL's sons named <Appar's
village name> (TirumunaippADi?)  + tirunAvukkaracu?

Analogous to kAlaDiccankaran, a boy named after
cuntarar would have to be called ArUr cuntaran. I do
not suppose this is encountered.

> A form like kAlaTiyAn2 would be fine too.

Precisely. It is for this reason that a name like
kAlaDiccankaran would be a redundancy and hence, I
guess, quite out of the ordinary.
>
> The reason for explicitly qualifying Sankara with
> kAlaTi could be the
> following. The name caGkaran2 is a popular one in
> the tirunelvEli district
> among brahmins and non-brahmins.

Was the name popular even in the timeframe in
question?

> The name refers to
> ziva at caGkaran2kOvil, a
> popular place of pilgrimage in the tirunelvEli
> region. (I do not have any
> epigraphic data on the temple.)

The age of this temple would naturally be of interest.


> It is possible that
> the father of
> kAlaTiccaGkaran2 wanted to indicate that the boy was
> being named after the
> human Sankara of kAlaTi and not the divine Sankara
> at caGkaran2kOvil.

IMHO, improbable although not impossible.

On the other hand, let's look at occurrences of the
word or name cankara in the epigraphic record.

1. cankarappADiyAr. According to MTL, this is <
cakkarappADiyAr, so stands for oilmen. MTL gives a
SII reference for this.
2. cankaran in the meaning of warrior (< saMhAra)
according to MTL quoting yAzppANa akarAti.
3. cankara also means (persons) of mixed caste. Cf MTL
(< saMkara).

Noboru Karashima gives this reading for one epigraph
in his book. I don't have the reference handy but if I
remember right it is one of the AllUr or
IcAnamangalam inscriptions.

But he also quotes another epigraph where he eschews
even this reading saying the meaning is not clear
since "cankara" is encountered juxtaposed with another
obscure expression (azincikai?).

Among various entries for kAlaDi in the MTL, there are
a couple which are interesting: 1) nearby 2) a
subordinate person/ a person under protection

These are some possible lines of inquiry.

Hope this helps,

Warm Regards,

LS
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